College Focus: Rebels Running On Empty

Can It Get Any Worse For Unlv?

February 09, 1995|By DAVE FAIRBANK Daily Press

Four years ago the University of Nevada at Las Vegas sat at the top of the college basketball world. The Runnin' Rebels had annihilated Duke for the 1990 NCAA Championship and were in the middle of what would be an unbeaten '90-91 regular season with a frighteningly talented team.

UNLV and its sad-eyed coach, Jerry Tarkanian, were on TV every time you flipped on the tube. The Rebels' marquee players, All-Americans Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon, were stars. You couldn't throw a handful of BBs in any shopping mall in America without hitting someone wearing a Runnin' Rebels hat, jacket or T-shirt.

Fast forward to February, 1995. The Runnin' Rebels, who will play at William and Mary on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and at Virginia on Sunday at 4 p.m., are a mid-level team in a mid-level league. Because of NCAA penalties, the only games they can play in their own building this season are league games.

UNLV has had three coaches this season alone. That staff was hired after the previous coach was bought out the week preseason practice began following the disclosure of an under-the-table contract agreement.

He had been hired two years earlier to clean up the reputation fostered by his predecessor, who had feuded with the NCAA for years and even with his own administration at the end of his tenure.

``Soap opera writers in Hollywood couldn't come up with the scenario we've endured over the last couple of years, and really, for the last six, seven, eight years,'' said Jim Weaver, UNLV's lame-duck athletics director who chose to resign rather than recommend the coach who was hired in October by the school's interim president.

On the court, Vegas is a few cards shy of a full deck this season. The Rebels are 8-9. After starting point guard Lawrence Thomas transferred, UNLV is down to eight scholarship players and 11 on the roster, in part because of NCAA penalties, in part because of the coaching turmoil.

``I had hoped last spring we could get down to the business of establishing stability,'' Weaver said. ``But then a lot of other things happened subsequent to last spring.''

Stability went out the window in August when UNLV interim president Kenny Guinn discovered a secret supplemental contract that his predecessor, Robert Maxson, had negotiated with basketball coach Rollie Massimino.

Massimino, who won an NCAA title at Villanova in 1985, hadn't endeared himself to many in the Rebels community for a couple of reasons: First, he didn't win, at least not to the lofty standards the community had come to expect. Under Massimino the Rebels were 21-8 in his first season and 15-13 in his second, the worst record since the year before Tarkanian arrived in 1973. Tark's teams won 509 games and went to 12 NCAA Tournaments in 19 seasons.

Second, Massimino was viewed as Maxson's guy in a town that endured a nasty, public feud between pro-Maxson and pro-Tark factions.

Massimino was earning $511,000 in salary from the school, along with another $375,000 annually funneled to him through a booster club. Guinn said the side deal was void because school officials were unaware of it. Massimino said the school owed him the money anyway.

Guinn and Massimino couldn't resolve the dispute and negotiated a $1.8 million buyout for the remainder of Massimino's contract the week preseason practice was supposed to start in October. Unfortunately for UNLV, the basketball program was left without a coach.

The program then went full circle. Guinn approached Tim Grgurich, an assistant coach on Tarkanian's teams for a dozen years and then an assistant with the NBA's Seattle Supersonics. A self-described workaholic and widely acknowledged as a players' coach, Grgurich helped mend fences with many longtime UNLV boosters who were turned off in the wake of Tarkanian's orchestrated departure following the 1991-92 season.

But the man everybody refers to as ``Gurg'' worked himself to physical exhaustion. He left the team Jan. 6 under doctor's orders to rest. Assistant coach Howie Landa assumed the head coaching duties. The Rebels went 5-2 with Landa at the helm.

Then on Jan. 30, the 63-year-old Landa, whose coaching career spans 23 years, announced that he, too, was stepping aside because the pressure had become too great. He is currently an administrative aide with the program and helps run practices, but is not traveling with the team.

Assistant coach Cleveland Edwards became the Rebels' third head coach this season and will be on the bench when UNLV heads east this week.

``Nothing's really changed,'' said Edwards, who spent six years on Tark's staff and who also was an assistant to Grgurich at Pittsburgh in the late '70s. ``When `Gurg' went out that was a major setback, but we all had our assignments and it was just a matter of carrying them out. The biggest thing is I have to be the guy who stands out front making the decisions instead of the guy in the background making suggestions. But `Gurg' gave all of us responsibilities, so that helped prepare us for something like this.''